Daily Archives: December 31, 2004

I know a lot of bloggers don’t like newspaper registration schemes, but for reasons that will be obvious to some, I support them.

However, I have just run across the worst, most onerous registration scheme yet devised by any newspaper. I registered just to see how bad it was. It’s at TheDay.com, which I guess is a small paper in Rhode Island. There are SEVEN screens of registration forms with every conceivable registration question. And then … and then … before you can open a link, you MUST confirm your registration by going through three more screens of forms and then clicking a link in an e-mail.

Standard practice is to have one registration screen and if e-mail confirmation is required, at least give the new registrant 30 days to respond.

I also find this wacky: Registration is only required for stories that are more than 48 hours old. In other words, the readers they should most care about registering, meaning their local readers who probably check the site daily, DON’T HAVE TO REGISTER? Only blogging schmucks like me, who are out of market and might look at the site only once in a lifetime, must register.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here. I’m only going off of what I saw. Continue reading →